Habit-Forming

It started with the scale: I'd earned enough reward points from my law school research provider to garner a high-tech scale that not only measured weight down to a tenth of a pound, but also used electrical impulses to measure body water, body fat, and body mass index.  The scale told me I was overweight, that I had been for some time, and that my body was going to remain in a holding pattern between 197 and 200 pounds for the foreseeable future.  I'd made occasional efforts to exercise (when I remembered) and watch what I ate (when I felt like it), but the difficult reality was that my body was accustomed to weighing what it did, and had gotten quite good at absorbing sporadic attempts to push it out of stasis.

This year, January 1st came and went without my having decided on a desirable, attainable goal.  I had thought of making another effort at losing weight and making the most of my physical prime while it lasted, but I just couldn't see how this year would be any different.  I talked about this with my friend Dave and he gave me some very wise advice: Achievable change comes not so much from changing our natures, but rather by setting up a system that anticipates and compensates for our failings.  Self-control was going to be my weakness; how could I plan around it?

At Dave's suggestion, the first thing I did was set up a system of accountability--I spent the better part of a Sunday afternoon drawing a chart that measured both my weight and the remaining weeks in the year.  My first rule was that no matter what I did during the week, I would have to weigh myself every Saturday morning and mark it on the chart.  That would make it harder for me to ignore any sustained period of ineffectiveness.  I read somewhere that you could lose a pound per week by maintaining a caloric deficit of 500 calories per day, so I thought that losing 25 pounds over 50 weeks was an achievable goal.  I agreed with K. that the reward for attaining my goal by the end of the year would be a trip to visit my friends Dave and Steve--I told both of them to make the goal less tentative and more actualized.  I posted the chart on the wall next to my closet, where I would see it at the beginning and end of every day.

To run up a daily caloric deficit, I tried to think of a daily exercise that I would be able to sustain habitually.  Past experience had shown me that the gym was usually too far away to make a gym membership a reliable habit, but there was a 22-story stairwell right outside my office, so my plan was to get to work half an hour early every day and walk the stairs before starting the day.  Best of all, I found out that walking up stairs, minute-per-minute, burns calories faster than just about any other form of exercise (including running).  I planned to get a cheap CD player and listen to books while I exercised every morning.

My office was on the 16th floor, so my routine was to walk up to the landing on the 23rd floor, walk all the way down to the ground floor, and then walk all the way back up to 16.  After this got easier, I started to do this once in the morning and once before leaving for home.  Then I consolidated my efforts into a single, 30-minute workout (two whole trips up and down), first thing in the morning.  By late summer I was able to run up three flights of stairs, two or three steps at a time, without getting winded.

On the diet side, I tried to think of an easy thing to give up, so I cut out butter-as-a-condiment.  This meant that I could still eat things that had been cooked-in/cooked-with butter or margarine, but I couldn't add it to bread or rolls or anything I prepared for myself.  After a few months I got impatient with my progress, so I gave up candy for the rest of the year.  I could still eat cookies, desserts, and things with chocolate baked into them, so this was actually a pretty easy vow to take.  Lest I sound too independent, K. helped immeasurably by planning meals that were low on carbs and animal fats and high in whole grains and legumes.

You can see from the chart that I had two weight spikes: the first one coincided exactly with the visit from both sides of the family for Ian's baptism, and the second one followed a trip to see K's family in Michigan.  One might argue that family is bad for your health, but I think it's more reasonable to conclude that visits with family are simply altered states that disrupt personal habits for good or ill.  Staring at the second spike, I decided I needed to accelerate my weight loss in order to meet my goal by the end of the year, so I did five push-ups and started adding a single push-up per weekday until I was up to sixty a night.  K. tells me I should start to ease off.

Last month, having plateaued a few pounds above my goal and starting to get impatient, I added the arbitrary rule that I could only eat one serving at dinner--I could put as much food as I wanted onto the plate, but there was no going back for seconds or thirds, and no snacks afterwards.  This was the real breakthrough: after all my efforts to eat responsibly throughout the day, I'm pretty sure I was undoing most of my work through third helpings and late-night snacking.  Once I added this last limitation the last few pounds went pretty quick.

Reaching my goal has been sort of anticlimactic because I've seen it coming for so long.  There was no hail-mary pass or last-minute turnaround because I've been repeating the same simple things over and over again.  From this year's experience I take away the following lessons: 

1. Charts that show measurable progress can be a powerful way to visualize and motivate.

2. Once you force yourself to measure your progress, you become more and more willing to make sacrifices in the name of achieving your goal.

3. There is little that cannot be accomplished by forming a simple, faithful habit.

That's enough sermonizing for one night.  Next goal is 160 pounds, which will take me completely out of the overweight range for the first time in my adult life.  See you there.